Welcome to the Holidaze

Marketing Technology in today’s digital world

Ahh, the Holidaze. The time when it's easy to let everything—just—slide. What if you made this time work FOR you?

Holidaze:

Term that defines the feelings of downtime, distraction, and confusion business people have between Thanksgiving and Christmas; a time when we and our clients are busier shopping for gifts in crowded retail stores vs. making our businesses grow.

As we prepare to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, the end of the year home stretch between late November into early January can sometimes be referred to as the "Holidaze."

While personally this time of year is often fulfilling, it's easy to see how this time can easily turn into a "loss" professionally. For businesses, the stretch from November to January often ends up being a string of away message email replies and missed calls. If we're lucky, we squeeze in some meetings and some targeted marketing and call it a win.

What if the "Holidaze" could be something so much more for you and your work? What if it could be a time when we refocus and try out new tools? Read on below—in this special Thanksgiving week edition of the enewsletter—for a few of our ideas on how to reimagine the next sixty days.

Be part of Something Bigger

Take advantage of the many global movements happening during this time period and make them work for you and/or your business! In the world of tech, there are two in particular you may want to pay attention to:

#CyberMonday: The web-only follow up to "BlackFriday." If you're selling anything online (products, services, etc.), you'll do well to have a presence on this day and offer some sort of incentive. Think offer codes on webinars or design services, for example, or a discounted or free shipping opportunity. Try to be genuine and offer something of real value to your customers! This year, Cyber Monday is November 30th. We recommend starting your communications early!
#GivingTuesday: Giving Tuesday is a counter to the all to often excess of the season—a global day of giving. Businesses and individuals the world over partner with non-profits large and small to give back on Tuesday, December 1st. While this will be a great day to make a financial contribution, why not think outside the box? What about volunteering as a group from your business to a community cause? Or, if you're capable of doing so, offering to match employee gifts to a particular organization of their choosing? Maybe donate pro bono services. There are countless ways to give!

Outside of tech and digital media, you could consider:

Having your business adopt a local family for the holiday
Give away some products and services as a gesture of thanks

(Re)Connect with your Customers

Rather than losing touch with your customers and professional connections, use the last month of the calendar year as a way to reconnect and touch base:

Make phone calls to clients and/or customers with no particular agenda—just check in, ask how their year is wrapping up and about their priorities for the new year
Send Christmas cards, a new-year spirited email, or a holiday postcard—give your connections something tangible (or tech-tangible!) that says "We're thinking of you!"
Host or cohost a planned or even impromptu networking cocktail or coffee

Take a Test Drive

If this is a time when you're not busy with your typical work load, use that to your (and your business') advantage and test out some new tools!

Canva: Surprisingly simple online graphic design platform. Test it out for fun graphics for some of the campaigns we mentioned above or create your own family holiday graphics to share!
Travel Apps: Check out Peter Greenberg's list of travel apps to make the holidaze travel a bit less stressful. Try some new travel tech solutions for your business travel planning, too.
Ubertesters: Give someone else a shot at test-driving something you've created. Ubertesters brings the concept of crowd-sourcing to the world of beta testing. Not sure how to make this work for your product? Ask us!

Forward

Need help with your Marketing Technology? Let me help you out! You are always welcome to contact me with marketing, sales, business, or technology questions. The least I can do is share some ideas and, if needed, we can consider my helping you directly with needs.

Contact or schedule a meeting with McNary Marketing

*Note: The link shared above to Worldwide101 is generated through our affiliate relationship with them. Our team thinks they're pretty awesome, and we love that they provide innovative staffing solutions to so many industries! As always, when something works really well, we want to share it with you.